Temptation

“Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.” —Oscar Wilde

I ran before the heat arrived, listening to Aimee Mann’s sternly worded music delineating the significance of self-acceptance. Somehow, food was secondary but adequate: a bowl of fruit salad, a pause in the afternoon for more salad, an avocado, dinner, an afterthought. For the first time in years, I was alone, complete, free of the pull of duty and love, outside of the frame of family, mom, dad, and our kid, alone and grateful, alone and amazed by the strength I felt in my skin and bones, all the senses awake, the fuzz and mist of motherhood banished.

He was angry. Always angry. I had broken the compact, the promise to remain static while he moved ever outward, resisting gravity, discovering new galaxies, while I remained earthbound, the lighter of lamps, patient and understanding. And yet, he was honest enough to admit the truth, he had not fallen in love with that person, that mother-person, wife-person, daughter-person but the person who said she was ready to open the door into a new life. He had been behind that door, but I had failed to tell the truth because of the pull of desire, the presumed need for security, which was so strong. I thought about the final hours of Luke’s birth, the hours when the midwife was having a rest, Kevin a nap, when I had labored alone in the dark and promised this miracle, this child, I would find the strength to open the door again.

I dropped three dollars worth of quarters into the pay phone outside the post office. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Is he there?”
“He’s with my mom. I’m finishing up the paperwork for the house.
“Thank you.”
“Uh-huh.” Long silence.
“I’m sorry you’re so angry.”
“If you call after his nap tomorrow, he should be here.”
“Okay. So, bye.”
“Bye.”

I tried to remember those months in New York City when it seemed like a day when we didn’t speak, didn’t discuss my classes or his reporting, or our mutual friends or anything, walking around a Brooklyn bodega with a basket buying things, waking up and feeling him close, would feel wrong. But now, exiting the bubble, the love bubble, the baby bubble, the marriage bubble, I understood what was missing. I wondered if this was what my mother had warned me about. “Whatever you do, don’t leave,” she had said when I expressed frustration with not writing. Was this how my parents survived, in a huddle, breathing one another’s breath, refusing to consider a world that was not on the axis of their relationship? How did they survive Catherine’s death, letting go of their daughter, closing ranks around the loss, isolating themselves even from me? I was like a pinball, smashing into the edges of things, directionless and drunk until I stopped drinking, and nine years later, Kevin appeared and said, “Come. Have a baby. Have a husband. Be a trailing spouse.”

The hamster wheel that spun incessantly, pausing occasionally to allow for another disturbing question, dominated my brain. Had we really loved each other? Were we an actual family? Who decided what something was, anyway? Aside from motherhood, I felt untitled, not a writer nor a wife. I spent the first five days in Taos writing frantically, working late into the night, rising before the heat to run, returning to write more, eat, read and return to writing. Guilt and anxiety fueled my creative energy. This seemed like a fit punishment for my failure as a wife. At night I lay sleepless, white moonlight chasing the shadows imagining I heard a baby cry, Luke crying for his absent mother. On the fifth afternoon, I went to the local grocery store, which was predictably posh and pricey as befitted a community like Taos with fancy takeaways and lots of exotic condiments. I was on line when a woman tapped me on my shoulder. “Are you the new writer?”

The woman was in her late forties or early fifties with long brown hair streaked with white. My mother would have labeled her hair inappropriate because of her age. She also had a small bird tattoo on her shoulder, visible in the sleeveless shift she wore with sandals. In fact, my mother would have found everything about this woman unacceptable and unbecoming in someone so “long in the tooth.”

photo of the Taos Pueblo by Richard Hedrick

“Yes. I’m in one of the casitas.”
“Where have you been hiding? I’m Valerie. I’m in the casita behind you.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“This is Helen.” Valerie indicated a tiny Asian woman who held a basket filled with onions. “Helen photographs vegetables.”
“Not just vegetables, Val! I also shoot landscapes and fruit, sometimes flowers. Have you been to the Pueblo?”
“I haven’t been anywhere.”

Talking to them reminded me of coming out of sesshin at the zendo; the sound of someone’s voice made me feel giddy. I had spoken to Kevin every day since I’d left but only once to Luke, who did nothing but breathe heavily until he threw the phone across the room. Otherwise, I hadn’t spoken or seen anyone except the coffee shop guy who handed me a to-go cup every morning without a word.

“Come to dinner with us tonight,” Val said. “We’re going to the Taos Diner. They have great burritos.”
“Thank you. What time?”
“We’ll pick you up at seven. Maybe the gorgeous Canadian will come.”
“What gorgeous Canadian?”
“The painter. He’s in the casita two doors down from you. He’s a very good painter.”
“And gorgeous.” Helen inhaled and exhaled loudly. “And I’m gay.”
“And I’m married,” Valerie said. “But I’d let him eat crackers in my casita. It’s like a supermodel understanding quantum physics. How can he be that good looking?”
“And nice. What is quantum physics, anyway, Valerie?” Helen was very pretty in a fiercely plain way, with no make-up and hair pulled back severely, but she had a lovely face. Valerie shrugged.
“I’m married, also,” I said. “My husband’s furious at me.”
“Why?”
“I left him to sell our house in Dallas. And I have an almost three-year-old.”
“Well, my daughter’s six. You aren’t actually from Dallas, are you?
“No. New Jersey and then New York and then London and then Dallas. I hated it there.”
“No shit.” Valerie looked at Helen. “Have you ever been to Dallas?”
“Not on purpose,” Helen said. “I was stuck in the airport once. A man in a cowboy hat called me an Oriental. Like a rug. He asked where I came from, and I told him to go fuck himself. He was a veteran, so maybe I should have been less hostile.”
“We had a library convention there once. I swear we searched high and low for the good parts. We found enormous churches. And malls. And hair salons.”
“Do you miss your daughter?”
“Not at all.” Helen pinched Valerie. “Ouch! I don’t! This is necessary. Art is necessary, and art is impossible with a rug rat asking why every fucking second.”
“I miss my son.”
“Of course you do! He’s still a baby who adores you. My diva daughter calls me mother and makes disparaging remarks about my clothes. Is this the first time you’ve left him?”
I nodded. My throat began to close.
“Does your husband call you a bad mother?”
I nodded again.
“Screw him, okay? You’re an artist. No one tells male artists they’re bad fathers! Do you think Picasso ever changed a diaper, or did Mamet know when parent/teacher conferences were held? I don’t. My husband’s a filmmaker, yet the first time I left home, he acted like I’d burned all the instruction manuals; he couldn’t turn on the stove, brush Hannah’s hair, or make breakfast. He kept calling until I stopped answering. What does your husband do?”
“He’s a journalist.”
“Is that why you moved so much?” Helen put an enormous number of onions down in front of the cashier.
“Yes. Do you eat those onions?”
“Some of them. I use the skin for a bunch of things and make dye and sometimes I photograph things through the skin.”
“She’s a genius,” Valerie said. “A control freak genius. She slides photographic film onto the emulsion with chopsticks. How long have you been married?”
“Less than three years.”
“Newlyweds!”
“His high chair was between us on our first anniversary.”
“Did you know each other for a long time?”
“We got engaged, married, and pregnant in two months.”
“Wow! We’d been together for twenty years before we had Hannah. Anyway, come to dinner.”

Dinner was a riot. Helen had a dry, sharp sense of humor and had been a resident in several other artist colonies where she had been the double minority: gay and non-white. “I was constantly consulted on any issue connected to being a dyke, being Asian, and, of course, where to get authentic Chinese food. Wisconsin farmers who considered black pepper exotic adopted me. A cheese ball I could review.”
“What’s a cheese ball?” Valerie asked.
Helen leaned over and whispered, “A ball of cheese frequently rolled in something like nuts.”

After dinner, we went to a local bar where Valerie and Helen slammed down free shots paid for by the men playing pool.
“They don’t even care that I’m gay and she’s married. We’re artists, and they assume we’re broke.”
“I am broke,” Valerie said.
“Me, too,”  Helen said. “What about you, Molly?”
“No. I was, but I’m not now.”
“Did you marry for money?” Helen was swaying slightly.
“I had no idea how much money he made, which pissed him off.”
“Why?”
“Because only rich people and college professor’s children don’t care about money. It’s another level of entitlement.”
“Fuck, money,” Valerie said. “Money’s stupid.”
“He grew up poor. It wasn’t stupid to him.”
“He sounds so judgy,” Helen threw her arm around me. “You don’t need judgy.”
“He’s a really good father.”

I felt choked with guilt. Here I was with two drunken artists making fun of my hard-working husband while my son was probably crying himself to sleep every night, wondering where I was. After her third shot, Valerie said the hunky Canadian artist also wanted to go to Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keefe’s house in Abiquiu, but he didn’t have a car. “I’m going there tomorrow,” I said.
“Can I come?” Helen asked.
“Of course.”
“I have to write,” Valerie said. “I’ve done nothing but visit thrift shops. Take the Canadian. He’s better looking than Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans.”

I ran almost six miles the next day, starting before the heat of the morning arrived. After I went to the store for milk, I remembered the trip to Ghost Ranch and knocked on the door of the Canadian’s casita. When he answered the door, the painter was very tall and very handsome, and he was carrying my first novel in his hand, a finger holding the place. “Hello,” he said. “I’m reading your book.”
I was incredibly hot and sweaty. “I’m a much better writer now,” I said.
“It’s very good.” Scott, that was his name, squinted at the back cover. “You’re less sweaty in the picture.”
I pretended to swig from my empty bottle of water. It felt like I was about to faint. I hated myself for my lack of confidence. I couldn’t stop staring. He was better looking than Daniel Day-Louis, which seemed unfair, somehow.
“Come inside and fill up your water bottle,” he threw the door open, and there was a breeze from a fan. “I’ll show you my paintings.” He paused. “I love your book.”

This made me feel better. Someone so beautiful couldn’t possibly be a good painter. I had toured the great museums of Europe with a strong foundation in modern art formed from years of visiting the Whitney and MOMA. I knew art, and this man who looked like something you’d find in the pages of a magazine only better surely sucked. But he didn’t. One canvas covered the length of the studio and was a breathtaking rendering of a Taos sunset. His vision was unique despite the familiar nature of his subject. Another smaller painting was of the Taos Pueblo, exquisitely drawn with both realistic detail and abstract touches.

I felt ambushed. I was trying to behave like an artist with a family, a husband, and a child, avoiding all distractions and temptation. Then this Daniel Day-Lewis doppelganger appears and has the temerity to be a brilliant painter and, as he handed me a towel and filled up my water bottle, seemed to be ridiculously nice. And he liked my book.

“Valerie said you wanted to visit Ghost Ranch,” I said. It was hard to tear my vision away from the pink, burnt orange, and violet beauty of his painting.
“Valerie’s a piece of work, isn’t she? What are you doing tonight?” Scott said.
“There’s a movie at the library that sounds excellent. We could go for dinner afterward.”
I was flummoxed. Was he asking me out on a date? The last time a man had looked at me with such delight seemed like forever. Since Luke’s birth, I have accepted the eclipse of my allure. Luke’s gummy adoration was surely sufficient. “Okay,” I said.
“Great. I’ll come by around seven. The movie starts at seven-thirty. We’ll go to Ghost Ranch tomorrow.”
“Okay.”

I walked out the door in a fugue state, trying to remember my identity as a fat Texas housewife with an angry husband, an abandoned child, parents who viewed my current life as hopeless, and friends who had forgotten me after I left New York. What was I thinking agreeing to go to a movie with the gorgeous Canadian? At least we’d have a chaperone the next day with Helen, but tonight we’d be alone.

Walking back to the general store, I went into the pay phone booth to dial Kevin’s work number but then stopped, realizing I didn’t want to talk to him, to hear the resentment in his voice about the sale of the house, the veiled threat of his disapproval, his digs at my selfishness and bad mothering. All of that could wait until I spent some time in the company of another man, who loved my writing and could paint a sunset beautiful enough to make the viewer cry.

I tried to write, failed, and began to dither. Dithering around the casita was unsatisfying, as I’d brought so few possessions to Taos. Since arriving I had purchased a pottery vase glazed in purple and red that now held some withered wild flowers. I washed my coffee mug, remade my bed, and then examined my clothing options, which were severely limited aside from shorts, t-shirts, and a single skirt, which had been tight since the baby was born. Now it was loose, very loose. I tried to see my reflection in the single mirror above the bureau but only managed an unsatisfying chunk of my neck to my waist. I was thinner.

When I was about to leave for Scott’s casita, there was a knock on the door, and he was standing there in all his incredibly tall, incredibly handsome, incredibly talented, incredibly nice Canadian glory. I nearly slammed the door in his face but instead stepped back while he walked in, went over to my desk, and examined the photographs I had pinned all over the wall of Kevin and Luke. “Is that your boy?”
“Yes.”
“He’s very fine. And is that your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Nice looking man. I like what you’ve done with the place.”
I frowned. What if I chose to live like a Buddhist nun, with a bed, a desk, a single mug, and thirty pictures of my husband and child pinned on the wall?

Scott described each artist in the other casitas as we walked toward town. Ava was a sculptor who had won a bronze medal for Germany in the 1988 Olympics by throwing a shot put. She welded together massive pieces of twisted metal from car wrecks she found scattered across the desert. “She’s scary when you first meet her,” Scott said. “She put me in a headlock, but after that, we became friends. She’s very funny.”                 

I felt short of breath and dizzy, angry and sick like someone waiting in line to ride an old roller coaster that was clearly dangerous, but somehow, I couldn’t turn around to safety but kept moving forward to be placed in the front car, strapped in and screaming. His effect on me was nothing I could frame acceptably. I wanted to touch him and be touched in return.

“Thaddeus lives there. He’s writing a book on the history of steam engines in nineteenth-century England or Scotland. I’m not sure which. He's very serious about the research, and he’s hugely into that horror writer,” Scott paused.
“Stephen King?”
“No.”
“Poe?”
“No.”
“Bram Stoker?”
“No. And it’s not the Frankenstein woman.”
“Mary Shelley?”
“No. You’re very up on horror writers, aren’t you?”
“Not really. Life is horrible enough.”
Scott looked down at me. “Are you mad about something?”
“No.”
“Depressed?”
“No. Well, I miss my son.”
“Not your husband?”
“He’s furious at me for leaving.”
“Didn’t he make you live in Dallas?”
“How do you know that?”
“Valerie told me. Sorry, we were talking about you.”
“I’m trying to be a good wife.”
“What does that look like? Does coming to Taos make you a bad wife?”
“Yes.”
“When is it your turn to be happy?”

The film was from Iran, about an unhappy woman married to a stubborn fundamentalist who doesn’t want her to go to night classes even though their baby sleeps when she leaves for class. The husband wasn’t so much against his wife becoming educated as he was afraid to lose her. They both adored their baby. It was uncomfortably close to my situation. We walked across the street to a local bar afterward.

“Marriage is a quagmire,” Scott said.
“I think they’ll find a way to settle things.”
“He was such a prick! All she wanted to do was study English.”
“It’s not that simple. Change can be threatening.”
“Are you supposed to stay the same when you marry someone? Are you supposed to shrink and disappear?”
“No, but you might have to help your partner see that you aren’t leaving them behind.”
“Anyway, she had his kid. I mean, how much more can you show someone you love them?”
I didn’t answer. It was a fair question, and sometimes I wondered whether Kevin understood that while he had added wife and child to his resume, I had lost my chance to be a tenured professor, my apartment, most of my friends, and my identity as a person apart from being a mother. I looked up to meet Scott’s eyes, something I’d avoided ever since we’d met.
“Hey,” he said, “I’ve never been married. I don’t have the right to be critical. I’m sure Kevin is nothing like that guy.”

We avoided anything personal until Scott stood at my casita's door. “Did your sister die like the sister in your novel?” I wasn’t prepared for his question. My eyes filled with tears. “I have no right to ask that. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s fine. No one ever asks about her. It’s like she never existed.”
“And did you have a breakdown?”
I nodded.
“The writing was so real, the grief and the pain. Most people don’t get it.”
“How do you get it?”
“My mother died of cancer when I was thirteen.”
“I’m so sorry.” I thought about Luke and how he murmured “Mama” when I was rocking him to sleep. “That must have been very hard.” So, he hadn’t led such a charmed life after all.
Scott touched the side of my face. “In case no one has told you in a long time, you’re very beautiful.” And then he turned and vanished into the darkness.

—Molly Moynahan